Fantasy Religions: Sacrilege, Blasphemy, and Heresy

Erik1 Comment

160321SibylWhen creating religions for our stories, one of the things to think about is how the people who follow that tradition respond to offenses against its rules and principles. Is your character running the risk of torture and death if they question the accuracy of the sacred texts, or are they just going to get a stern glare from their grandmother for using the wrong hand to swirl the incense at the family altar?

Just as there are lots of different religious traditions that people practice in many different ways, there are lots of different ways of disrespecting religious ideas and offending the people who hold them. I’m going to talk about three kinds of religious transgression today that are often confused with one another. The differences between them are important, though. Which of these kinds of transgression a society recognizes and how it responds to them reflect important things about its history and religious traditions. These three are: sacrilege, blasphemy, and heresy.

(Or, as we call it my house, Saturday night.)

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Making Supper at the Prancing Pony

Erik

Here’s a look at how we made yesterday’s Supper at the Prancing Pony.

The menu

  • Root vegetable soup
  • Cold chicken and ham
  • Bread and butter
  • Cheese
  • Blackberry tart
  • Beer

erikchef1No meal in The Lord of the Rings is more clearly described than the supper laid on by Butterbur of Bree at the Prancing Pony, and we have stuck to the letter of the description: a hearty vegetable soup and cold chicken and ham served up with bread, butter, and cheese, with home-brewed stout to drink and a blackberry tart for dessert. (1.9)

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Dining in Middle Earth: Supper at the Prancing Pony

Eppu1 Comment

“In a twinkling the table was laid. There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter, and half a ripe cheese: good plain food, as good as the Shire could show, and homelike enough to dispel the last of Sam’s misgivings (already much relieved by the excellence of the beer).”

LotR Dinner3 Dessert

Barliman Butterbur serves up a filling supper of good home cooking at the Prancing Pony and we’ve done our best to do his fare justice. We have a soup of roasted root vegetables, cold chicken and ham, and bread with butter and cheese. A simple blackberry tart makes a satisfying dessert and a home-brewed blackberry stout goes with it all.

LotR Dinner3

We imagined a material culture in Bree-land that combines Hobbit and Bree Human features, possibly with some Dwarven-made touches. The color white is pulled from Mr. Butterbur’s white apron and the white tablecloth on the four Hobbits’ dinner table. Expanding on that, we used mostly white dishes, white candles, and clear glass. The soup bowl with leaf imprints on its inner surface is similar to the green one in the Long-Expected Party. A fabric-lined basket holds a variety of bread, and half a wheel of cheese invites nibbling.

LotR Dinner3 Main

And there’s pie!

LotR Dinner3 BW

Check out what’s it about in the introduction, or read the how-to!

Images by Eppu Jensen

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!

Connections: Rome and the Arctic

Erik

160314glassFrom the city of Rome to the Arctic circle is a distance of about 2,750 km. At its greatest extent, the northernmost tip of the Roman empire was more than 1,000 km from the Arctic. Even across such a distance, however, there were connections. A couple of little pieces of evidence show us how knowledge of Rome could reach the far north, and how knowledge of the far north could reach Rome.

In Føre, Nordland, on an island in far northern Norway, is an ancient burial site. Over several centuries in the late iron age around 10 mound burials were raised of earth and stone. (The number is uncertain because some of the mounds have been destroyed by erosion and farming.) Not all have been excavated, but those that have have yielded the evidence of extraordinary wealth by local standards, including a Roman drinking glass buried in the only female grave so far known at the site. (The glass pictured is of a similar type, but not from the same site.)

It is very unlikely that Føre had any direct connection to the Roman world. Rather it was at the northern extreme of a network of trade and alliances that spanned Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea region which used Roman imports as high-status trade goods and diplomatic gifts. The people of Føre may have had very little idea of what the Roman empire was, but they had some access to Roman goods and valued them as precious objects.

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What If There Was White Moose Cavalry for Fantasy Winter Warfare?

Eppu

What if there was a fantasy world where moose were tamed and selectively bred for cavalry? I spent some time pondering it after a couple of things found online collided in my head.

First, there’s this animated gif of a moose rushing through a deep snow-filled field:

moose rushing through a snow-filled field

Their size, speed, and ability to gallop through deep snowbanks make moose fearsome and pretty near unstoppable. Imagine a line of ginormous moose thundering at full tilt towards you across a field – that’s a truly frightening thought! Also bogs don’t slow them down by much, I believe, which might conceivably tip the scales in the right kind of a campaign.

Then, I saw this photo of an albino moose:

Yle Antti Terava valkoinen hirvi

Natural snow camouflage. Hmmm.

It’s not that far-fetched an idea, apparently. The Soviet Union attempted to build a moose cavalry in the first half of the 20th century, but they were unsuccessful. In our world, the solitary habits of moose seem to be standing in the way of domestication. If we’re talking about a fantasy world, however, I don’t see why not.

Images: Rushing moose gif via Crazy Hyena. White moose by Antti Terävä via Yle

The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?

Why White Horus Bothers Me More Than Black Heimdall

Erik

In 2011’s Thor, Idris Elba, despite not looking typically Norse, plays the Norse god Heimdall. In 2016’s Gods of Egypt, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, despite not looking typically Egyptian, plays the Egyptian god Horus. The casting of Elba as Heimdall surprised me the first time I saw the movie, but it has never bothered me as a fan or as a historian. Coster-Waldau as Horus really bothers me and I think it’s worth taking a minute to explain why.

160310HeimdallHorus

I have nothing against Coster-Waldau as an actor. I haven’t seen Gods of Egypt and don’t plan to, so I have nothing to say about his performance in this particular role, but he’s not the problem here. The problem is in the casting of the movie as a whole.

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Mariachi Cover of Star Wars: Episode IV Throne Room Theme

Eppu

Did you know there’s a band dedicated to making mariachi-style covers of video game and pop culture themes? I didn’t, until today. And, boy, Mariachi Entertainment System is brilliant! Here is just one of their recent productions: the throne room theme from the end of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope:

Star Wars – Mariachi Cover – The Throne Room by Mariachi Entertainment System

That really works! Visit their YouTube channel for more videos.

(Don’t you just love the Internet for finding new, cool stuff!?)

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Quotes: You Can’t Unite Woman and Human

Eppu

“There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. How am I to put this together with my human life, my intellectual life, my solitude, my transcendence, my brains, and my fearful, fearful ambition? I failed miserably and thought it was my own fault. You can’t unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and anti-matter; they are designed not to be stable together and they make just as big an explosion inside the head of the unfortunate girl who believes in both.”

– Joanna Russ: The Female Man

A somber view of what it’s to be an intelligent, determined woman in a world run by men who don’t recognize their value.

Russ, Joanna: The Female Man. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975, p. 151.

(This quote comes from my 21 new-to-me SFF authors reading project.)

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

An End and a New Beginning for Bede’s World

Eppu

Bede’s World, a small museum in Jarrow, Tyne & Wear, Northumbria, dedicated to the Venerable Bede and 7th-century England, shut down its operations in February 2016.

Bedes World Main Entry

Bedes World Entrance Inside

In addition to indoor exhibits, the museum includes several replica wattle and daub buildings, modeled on structures excavated in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria and built with original materials and contemporary methods. On the grounds there is also a herb garden and a working farm with a small collection of rare breed animals resembling those that lived 1,300 years ago.

Bedes World Collage

The museum issued the following statement:

“It is with great regret that the Trustee Board took the decision for Bedes World [sic] to cease operation from Friday 12 February 2016 due to a lack of funds.

“Steps are being taken to put the company into administration through the appointment of an Insolvency Practitioner.

“The Trustee Board have made arrangements for the immediate care of the farm animals and the security of the site.

“The Board would like thank all staff, volunteers and stakeholders for their hard work and dedication to Bedes World. [sic]”

Fortunately, only a few weeks afterwards better news surfaced: a new operator was found to run the site. At this writing it isn’t clear what their plans for Bede’s World are, though. (Follow this link to read the statement by Groundwork South Tyneside and Newcastle, the new operator.)

Found via Anne Bennett and BBC.

Images: Bede’s World main entrance, outside view via Bede’s World. Other photographs by Eppu Jensen

Why I Always Grant Extensions

Erik2 Comments

160303booksAs the middle of the semester approaches and assignments start coming due, the e-mails start coming in. Students start coming to me before or after class or poking their heads into my office between classes. I know what they’re going to ask. Some of them know the word for it; others just know what they need: a few more days to work on their papers and projects. An extension.

There’s always a reason. The flu. Grandmother passed away. Father in the hospital. Car trouble. I know pretty much what they’re going to say before they even open their mouths. And I know what I’m going to say, too: yes. Always yes. I never ask for proof (though my students will often bring me notes and I will look at them out of respect). Anyone who asks can have a few extra days.

I have known professors who take pride in never having granted an extension, or if they do they want to see the doctor’s note and the obituary in the newspaper and they will run the story down like an investigative journalist tracking a political scandal. For them, deadlines are deadlines: the line past which you’d better be dead and have a note from God if your paper isn’t done. I respect my fellow professors who teach this way, but it’s not my way.

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